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Syslogd Overwhelming Your Computer?

If your Leopard (Mac OS X 10.5) system is unexpectedly sluggish, logging might be the culprit. Run Activity Monitor (Applications/Utilities/ folder), and click the CPU column twice to get it to show most to least activity. If syslogd is at the top of the list, there's a fix. Syslogd tracks informational messages produced by software and writes them to the asl.db, a file in your Unix /var/log/ directory. It's a known problem that syslogd can run amok. There's a fix: deleting the asl.db file.

Launch Terminal (from the same Utilities folder), and enter these commands exactly as written, entering your administrative password when prompted:

sudo launchctl stop com.apple.syslogd

sudo rm /var/log/asl.db

sudo launchctl start com.apple.syslogd

Your system should settle down to normal. For more information, follow the link.

DealBITS Drawing: Audio Hijack Pro Winners

DealBITS Drawing: Audio Hijack Pro Winners -- Congratulations to David Scott of mac.com, Mary Seiler of comcast.net, and Marian Petrides of earthlink.net, whose entries were chosen randomly from 1,246 valid entries in last week's DealBITS drawing and who each received a copy of Audio Hijack Pro from Rogue Amoeba Software, worth $32. Even if you didn't win, you can still save $5 on Audio Hijack Pro through 11-Jul-05. Use the coupon code TIDBITS2 when ordering to receive your discount; this offer is open to all TidBITS readers. [ACE]